Sunday, December 20, 2020

Sam Shamoun "Revealing the God Whom Allah Worships and Prays To!"


Allah is upon the straight path because it is the path that leads to Him 11:56,4:175. It is His path
 6:126,153,14:1,42:53"the path of God, to whom belongs all that is in the heavens and earth: truly everything will return to God". 
He guides unto it those that hold fast by Him 3:101,43:43. He alone shows humanity the straight path and without His will none can achieve it 48:2,6:39 as taught in sura fatiha 
"guides us to the straight path". 
Jesus whom some see as the destination of their spiritual path, contrary to Allah, testifies that none other than the way of God, Who is a different Entity than himself, is the straight path 
19:36"And [thus it was that Jesus always said]: "Verily, God is my Sustainer as well as your Sustainer; so worship [none but] Him: this (alone] is a straight way."
Obeying the prophet, who is on the straight path 43:43 is following the way of Allah. "The way" of the prophet Jesus Jn14:6 is none other than the straight way of God, as outlined in Lk10:25-28 where he commands observance of the laws of the Torah. In that passage from Luke he is asked about the conditions of salvation and the questioner quotes from Lev19 which details certain laws like the observance of the sabbath and admonishes to 
"Keep all my decrees and all my laws and follow them. I am the LORD". 
The 2nd passage quoted by the questioner is Deut6 which speaks of loving the One God and obeying His comandements 
"keep the commands of the LORD your God and the stipulations and decrees he has given you. Do what is right and good in the LORD's sight..obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness". 
One is justified before God, not by faith alone but by deeds too. Consequently the Nazarenes, Jesus' early group of small band of followers, observed all Jewish customs outlined in the Torah but differed from Jews in that they recognized Jesus as the Messiah. The Nazarenes grew among the Israelites but persecutions forced them to go into hiding, with Paul playing a central role in their persecution prior to his conversion. After joining their ranks, he influenced the group leaders, namely Peter and James, to reach out to the Gentiles. With more non-Jews entering the fold, Jewish laws binding on the community were abandoned Acts15:1-29 and so was Jesus' "way". 

The Nazarenes who were centered in Jerusalem gradually became isolated. The main Christian movement started looking up to Paul for leadership, instead of Jesus' brother James, a strict observer of Jewish Law, considered to be Jesus' successor in non-canonical Gospels. With the establishment of Christianity as a state religion in Rome by Constantine in the 4th century, they definitely fled Jerusalem, into the surrounding deserts. They managed to survive outside Palestine as they are mentioned by Jerome upto 380AD to have lived in the Syrian desert. Among them the Ebionites (who claimed to descend from the original Jewish disciples led by James) and Elchasites who rejected Paul as a charlatan and his teachings as falsehood, as well as the Zadokites, Essenes, Rechabites, Sabeans, Mandaeans etc. They had their own writing which they considered scripture, composed of an oral tradition attributed to Jesus, and some HB books. 

Their writings are known, among others as Gospel of the Nazareans, Gospel of the Hebrews and Gospel of the Ebionites. They would later write that Paul was a false apostle who taught heresy based on the fact he was a failed convert who was disappointed with Judaism and therefore motivated to teach against its laws, all the laws that constituted Jesus' "way". 

Unfortunately the group that opposed them and their practices gained more converts, obviously as it appealed much more to non-Jews, more particularly the hellenized Romans and Greeks. The Nazarenes and similar groups were inevitably marginalized while the more and more dominant groups decided what the Church’s organizational structure would be, as well as its official creeds, or which books would be accepted as Scripture. The group that became "orthodox", further sealed its victory, by the pens of early writers like Iraeneus, Justin Martyr and Tertullian, claiming that their "way" had always been the majority opinion of Christianity, going back to Jesus and his apostles.

Further reading answering Sam Shamoun "Revealing the God Whom Allah Worships and Prays To!":

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